Announcement: you can now edit secondary authors like primary authors!

[Shaun]

Hi all, we recently released an improvement of interest — the ability to edit secondary authors from the book edit page. You can now edit secondary authors as you can primary authors.

Feel free to give it a go and let us know what you think!

😊

[Moloch]

GREAT improvement (THANK YOU), but something maybe still needs to be fixed? I was testing it here https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36151561-dracula I wanted to change the secondary author John^Irving to John^^Irving (2 spaces), but it seems that the change isn't saved.

edit: changing the role works

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

You probably still cant make that change as being too much like the original. Add the 2 space author and delete the 1 space author.

[Emy]

Just noting that although it's popper up a few times for me earlier today (possibly before your official go live), any changes I made weren't saved (e.g. adding a . to an initial).

The move up and down buttons are missing - is that intended?

Note to other librarians - if the up/down buttons are missing for you and you want to move the primary author elsewhere in the list, you'll need to put Author #2 into Author #1 before saving. (You can leave Author #2 blank then)

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

Emy wrote: "The move up and down buttons are missing - is that intended?"

That's inconvenient. :-(

[ReadingFrog]

I like being able to add roles for the secondary authors, but not at the cost of losing the up/down buttons.

[Moloch]

Changing a letter on a secondary author's name works (still not working if I want to add a space between fist and last name, see my post #2).

ReadingFrog wrote: "I like being able to add roles for the secondary authors, but not at the cost of losing the up/down buttons."

I prefer being able to edit and add roles rather than having the up/down buttons (I hope they can find a way to add them back or to add drag/drop feature like in the series page, obviously, but I wouldn't want them to remove this new feature to restore the arrows).

[Shaun]

Thanks for your comments thus far. The arrows were removed to make it faster to make changes through copy/paste. The arrows were slow. Having said that though, a request for a drag and drop feature has been passed on to our developers for consideration.

[☕ Lachgas ♿]

I second Moloch's post - although I must admit it's surprisingly uncomfortable with the copy + paste - had to do that several times yesterday and it is more annoying than I initially thought - and slower than the (indeed) slow arrows.
Because if you swap authors you have to move around two names but ctrl + c only can remember one of them, which means either you remember the name yourself and type it again (which isn't much difference to correct authors prior to the new function, and really slower than the arrow) or you open up an additional author field to just put one temporarily and then copying the second one, placing it in new spot, copying the first one to it's correct spot after that.
That is really quite uncomfortable, although I thought at first it wouldn't be that big deal - but, it's especially if there are only two or three author names way slower than the arrows.
(I did have some issues yesterday with getting an "error" page if there were empty author fields left in the record -may have been bad luck but as it happend twice on different books I do delete the empty ones before saving)

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

Shaun wrote: "Having said that though, a request for a drag and drop feature has been passed on to our developers for consideration. "

They didn't have this request before? Why not? It was made in this group the Feedback group several years ago and more than once.

Edited because I forgot where I was.

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

Moloch wrote: "Changing a letter on a secondary author's name works (still not working if I want to add a space between fist and last name, see my post #2)."

This wasn't possible for primary authors. This is the same protocol as before.

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

Shaun wrote: "Thanks for your comments thus far. The arrows were removed to make it faster to make changes through copy/paste. The arrows were slow. Having said that though, a request for a drag and drop feature..."

As lethe says, this is not easier than the arrows. It's really quite cumbersome if there are several authors. It was always possible to add an author and delete the old one, so editing isn't exactly new.

[lethe]

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "As lethe says, this is not easier than the arrows."

I can't take credit for that comment :-)
But I do agree with it, I think.

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

lethe wrote: "Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "As lethe says, this is not easier than the arrows."

I can't take credit for that comment :-)
But I do agree with it, I think."

Sheesh! I've been getting some of my favorites mixed up on the keyboard lately.

[lethe]

lethe wrote: "But I do agree with it, I think."

Well. I'm going to eat my words.

I've been looking at a book with many contributors and I must say I do like that it is much easier now to move secondary authors to another profile, and to edit author roles if necessary.

I have long given up on getting contributors in the right order, as Goodreads would often rearrange them after saving anyway.

The only important thing (to me) is getting the primary author/editor(s) right, and I find cutting and pasting their names much less tedious than moving them slowly up the hierarchy by way of the arrows.

Lachgas wrote: "Because if you swap authors you have to move around two names but ctrl + c only can remember one of them, which means either you remember the name yourself and type it again (...) or you open up an additional author field to just put one temporarily and then copying the second one, placing it in new spot, copying the first one to it's correct spot after that."

@Lachgas, the way I do it is (f.e.):

author field 1: John Smith
author field 2: David Jones

cut and paste David Jones to author field 1, like this:

author field 1: John SmithDavid Jones
author field 2:

and then cut and paste John Smith to author field 2:

author field 1: David Jones
author field 2: John Smith

That way you won't have to remember any names and won't have to add an extra author field to "park" a name.

(Unless I misunderstood what you meant.)

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

I have never had a problem with the feature the way it was, but I don't work with anthologies with a gazillion authors. Adding a role was never difficult for me - I just deleted the old author and re-added with the role. Sometimes, this was the easiest way to move authors around, too, sometimes it wasn't.

That said, I do appreciate the effort to make adding secondary authors easier. However, removing the arrows wasn't the way to do it.

[ReadingFrog]

Shaun wrote: "Having said that though, a request for a drag and drop feature has been passed on to our developers for consideration. "

Is this the drag and drop feature utilized in editing series? I agree that the arrows were slow, so the drag and drop feature would be much quicker.

lethe wrote: "author field 1: John Smith
author field 2: David Jones

cut and paste David Jones to author field 1, like this:

author field 1: John SmithDavid Jones
author field 2:

and then cut and paste John Smith to author field 2:

author field 1: David Jones
author field 2: John Smith"

I have the book page open in one tab and the edit page in another so that I can keep track of all the authors. I copy and paste the authors in the order I want from the book tab to the edit tab. I don't want to accidentally delete an author because I'm trying to rearrange the names.

[Krazykiwi]

Arrows or drag and drop, I don't care, but cut and paste is a pain when you have to move several authors. I do a lot of editing sometimes in non-fiction multi-author books with several editors, and in sci-fi anthologies, again often with several editors.

These often get imported with correct names and roles, but the editors last, so you have to move 2-3 authors from the end of the list to the beginning without losing anyone. Which means cutting the first author name out to some other place like notepad, cutting the bottom author out and putting it in the top, cutting the second author out and moving up the next.

This seems very error prone for the pretty common case of wanting only to move the authors, not change any names.

ETA: Here's the kind of thing I'm talking about:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6...
1. And a challenge to the engineers. Add a new edition of this book, and add all the authors but with the editors at the bottom (the way they are often imported or added by non-librarians.)
(1a. Lie down a bit, and make a note to come up with a way to not have to hand add that many authors for anthologies if there's already a correctly added version! But I digress.)
2. When you've recovered from that effort, and all the authors are out of order, get all three editors to the top without messing it up.
2a. Imagine doingt this with the arrows, one row at a time and you'll see why a) it's easier and b) it's still crazy tedious.
2b. Please add drag and drop :)

[lethe]

Drag and drop, the way it is with the series, is MUCH better than the arrows used with the author fields. So if that can be added, yes please!

(But I still don't see why author names need to be saved off-site when moving them around.)

[Krazykiwi]

lethe wrote: "Drag and drop, the way it is with the series, is MUCH better than the arrows used with the author fields. So if that can be added, yes please!

(But I still don't see why author names need to be sa..."

Not saved, but if you want to swap places for two of them, you have to put the one you're replacing somewhere while you do it.

I suppose you can just add a blank line and put it there, it just occurred to me. As long as where you're moving it to is "last place" - if it's not, it's the same thing, you still have to cut and paste more than ought to be necessary, and every c/p from one position to another is a big fat chance to lose data.

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

Krazykiwi wrote: "every c/p from one position to another is a big fat chance to lose data. "

This is the big danger with this.

[lethe]

I always do it as in my comment #15. I never had any problems.

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

I have commented in the bugs folder that removing a primary author is now not possible because you can't move it to the secondary position. It won't create an empty author profile to be deleted (whenever *that* bug might get fixed.)

[rivka, Former Moderator]

To avoid confusion and duplication, we are closing this thread. Please post any additional feedback on the new feature in the Feedback Group. (https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...)